Lies, damn lies and job interviews

Don’t we tell youngsters to say whatever they have to, within reason, to get the job?

“Money doesn’t matter to me.”

“Of course, I’ll work all weekends and holidays and never complain.”

“To me there would be no difference in working the register, dropping French fries or cleaning out grease traps and taking out the trash all day. I just want to work.”

So, as with much coachspeak that silly fans are wont to listen to, you shouldn’t pay much attention to what Astros’ job interviewees are saying as they parade through Minute Maid Park trying to claim one of the toughest jobs in country to get.

Ned Yost says the Astros are one starter away from having a really good staff. Yes, he sounds clueless.

But what do you think would happen if Yost told Drayton McLane and Ed Wade that to have a “really good staff” the Astros need TWO legitimate starters? (And we’re not talking about a couple of No. 6 or 7 starters like Mike Hampton and Russ Ortiz.)

Well, Yost almost certainly didn’t want to find out.

There are only 30 of these jobs. Why risk blow it by saying too much of the truth?

Remember when Gary Kubiak and every other coach who interviewed for the Texans job in 2006 told Bob McNair that David Carr could lead the team to the Super Bowl? (And please feel free to ignore the so-called myth-busting on that subject by some who can’t handle the truth, even when it isn’t that big of a deal.)

A journalist saying that about Carr makes him or her a really poor judge of what it takes to lead a team to a Super Bowl. Though I don’t really believe McNair made love of Carr a stipulation for getting hired, a coach trying to get a job saying that, might have been smart.

Now is it possible that Kubiak really thought he could fix Carr? Of course. It’s also possible that he was saying what he thought he needed to say to get the job.

You think Jeff Van Gundy told Les Alexander what he really thought of Steve Francis when he interviewed?

The truth can keep you from getting hired.

“I don’t mind being on fries, but everybody knows the real money is made at the register, and I want to get paid.”

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On a side note, seems every time Carr’s name comes up, whatever the context, some rush to his defense. These people are an odd bunch.

Now they’re saying Carr could very well go to a Super Bowl this year with the Giants, proving that he could lead a team to a Super Bowl, so perhaps his absolute, unquestioned (by anyone with sense) failure as a quarterback with the Texans somehow wasn’t his fault. Hilarious.

Can’t you people just accept it that this guy couldn’t play and let it go? He will always be the butt of jokes in these parts. Fear is a particularly bad emotion for a quarterback.

If Eli Manning goes and stays down, I’d put more money on the Texans going to the Super Bowl than the Giants.

Listen, I understand that the Texans aren’ the most talented team in the league. (Kubiak is largely responsible.)

The weaker your team is, the better your coach needs to be. Teams with less talent than these Texans have made the playoffs.

Unless you are a bottom feeder franchise, if your team doesn’t have a top-10 coach and a top-10 quarterback, it ought to be looking for them. If you go five years with a coach and quarterback who aren’t in the top 10, you’re just wasting time.

The Texans wasted five years with a quarterback who wasn’t in the top 30. In my mind they now have a top-10 QB.

As for whether they have a top-10 coach … he has 11 games to get into the discussion.

Uh, I’m not at all happy about that. And neither are most Big 12 basketball fans (and coaches).

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Speaking of broadcasting developments that I’m not happy about …

I did a good job dodging it, thanks to a busy schedule that didn’t include time to worry about some rich guy not being able to join some other rich guys in their rich guy club, but I’m still getting e-mail from people asking me my opinion on Rush Limbaugh.

Stop it.

I don’t understand why people got all caught up in this ridiculous story anyway. I wasn’t for or against Rush Limbaugh buying into an NFL team. It’s his money.

And it’s the NFL owners’ private club, so if they choose not to let a guy in (which they were probably going to do) because he is too divisive and controversial, they certainly have that right.

Now I would rather weigh in on what the blubbering Limbaugh did Saturday afternoon. OK, he didn’t do it, but he was in on it.

I was rolling down I-10 to Baton Rouge listening to my UH Cougars battle to overtake Mississippi State, when the Cougars made a big play to move inside the Bulldogs’ 10-yard line.

“Uh oh,” Tom Franklin tells me, there might be a penalty. “Uh oh,” is right, because all of a sudden I’m no longer listening to Franklin’s dulcet bass and Ted Pardee’s rambling, unabashed homerism.

Instead, I’m bumping the Limbaugh theme song.

While that cut has a nice beat to it – arguably better than a couple of the songs U2 screamed at me last night at Reliant Stadium – that was quite the inappropriate time for the UH affiliate in Beaumont to switch to Limbaugh’s weekly wrap show.

After a particularly long version of the song, Limbaugh’s weekly highlights began.

It was just fat wrong.

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Since we’re on Limbaugh, the most ridiculous thing I heard about his race-baiting words is that they are usually just him being funny. You know, like Richard Pryor.

Limbaugh is not and never should be compared to Pryor, one of the great comedic minds in our country’s history. Well, I guess they both had issues with drug use, but that’s about it.

Plus, it was a weak argument in this case because NFL owners wouldn’t let Pryor buy into a team either, dead or alive.

I’ve talked to a lot of owners, and not one of them has sounded like Limbaugh or Pryor.

Now I wish there were a Richard Pryor-type owner in the league. Could you imagine him breaking down one of the Texans’ pitiful performances? That would be entertaining.